Joystiqhttp://www.joystiq.com
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en-usCopyright 2015 AOL, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.joystiq.com/2012/11/17/openfeint-shutting-down-december-14-in-favor-of-grees-service/http://www.joystiq.com/2012/11/17/openfeint-shutting-down-december-14-in-favor-of-grees-service/http://www.joystiq.com/2012/11/17/openfeint-shutting-down-december-14-in-favor-of-grees-service/#commentsOpenFeint, a mobile gaming platform that offers an online social hub and achievements system for iOS and Android games, will shut down on December 14. GREE, OpenFeint's parent company since April 2011, is offering options for developers to migrate existing OpenFeint-supported games to the GREE service. Some of the noteworthy OpenFeint-supported games include Tiny Wings, Fruit Ninja and Robot Unicorn Attack.

According to OpenFeint's support page, "all OpenFeint network calls will be nonfunctional which may result in service disruptions to your game and a poor player experience" after the plug is pulled on the service in mid-December.

Basic GREE platform integration is expected to take no longer than a week for some developers, and the list of changes between the services notes that "there is no asynchronous method associated with the unlocking of achievements for iOS games" on the GREE service.

Today, Android users can access OpenFeint, a social gaming suite which supports cross-platform communication, leaderboards and achievements for supported games. Aurora Feint, the company behind the tech, is currently working to enable cross-platform voice chat and real-time multiplayer sometime later this year.

PocketGamer reports Android users can download several new games supporting the platform right now, including iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad hit, Fruit Ninja, but plans are underway to offer 20 games over the course of the next month. Head past the break for the list of games, including those that are currently available.

On the same day as Apple announced the rollout of its iOS Game Center platform for next week, Aurora Feint, creator of the OpenFeint social network for iPhone/iPod Touch, says it will enable real-time multiplayer gameplay between iOS and Android devices later this year with OpenFeint PlayTime. The new developer tools will also allow real-time voice chat during gameplay across both mobile platforms.

"Traditionally, multiplayer technology has been accessible only to top tier developers. It's just too complicated and time consuming," Aurora Feint CEO Jason Citron said in the announcement. "So we invented PlayTime, which literally takes one day to integrate into a casual game."

Features will include VoIP, lobbies and matchmaking for "casual games," expanding to incorporate team-based voice chat and 16 player game servers for "core" titles.

According to Slide to Play, Aurora Feint has announced plans to bring its OpenFeint platform to Android devices. The platform made its name by creating an online social hub for iPhone gamers, allowing them to send instant messages, find other players and even find games (though it will soon face competition from Apple's own Game Center). The service will begin supporting Android later this summer, with Hudson Entertainment, Glu Mobile and Digital Chocolate all planning to support the launch.

Furthermore, Aurora Feint has announced that it has received a new capital investment from The9, a firm known primarily for operating several MMO products in China.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>AndroidAurora-FeintmobileOpenFeintThe9Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:00:00 ESThttp://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/06/capcom-joins-openfeint-social-gaming-network-on-the-iphone/http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/06/capcom-joins-openfeint-social-gaming-network-on-the-iphone/http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/06/capcom-joins-openfeint-social-gaming-network-on-the-iphone/#comments
While Microsoft has Xbox Live as an official network, and of course Sony has PlayStation Network, the iPhone doesn't yet have an official social gaming network, at least not until Apple's Game Center is unveiled later on this year. Until then, a company called OpenFeint has been connecting gamers on iPhones with leaderboards and achievements (which is why you'll often see their logo appear in your iPhone games). And while most of the developers signed on to OpenFeint so far have been pretty small, it's starting to reel in the big fish -- Capcom has signed on to hook its games up to the OpenFeint service.

The service will first appear in Capcom's Dark Void Zero and Hatchlings iPhone games, and both OpenFeint and Capcom say they are excited about the possibilities of working together. Of course, the release of Game Center may change the relationship, depending on what features Apple offers later this year. But OpenFeint says they're planning to offer services even on top of Game Center's planned featureset (Capcom has confirmed they want to use OpenFeint X, a platform for serving up virtual goods on the iPhone even beyond what Game Center will offer). So it sounds like even after Apple's official network is released later this year, Capcom will still have a use for its new partner.

Yesterday, Apple announced Game Center, a social gaming service for iPhone. Pretty much everyone with an iPhone has reason to be delighted with this development, except for companies like OpenFeint and ngmoco, which already operate social network gaming services for iPhone in OpenFeint and Plus+, respectively. Are both companies freaking out? Not in public.

In a statement, OpenFeint positioned the OpenFeint X service, which allows iPhone devs to sell virtual goods, as the next step for its business. "OpenFeint X is currently built on top of OpenFeint and in the future it will also sit on Apple's Game Center social graph, achievements and leaderboards so developers and gamers don't miss a step," said OpenFeint CEO Jason Citron. "Apple is a key partner and we are delighted that they have validated the first half of the OpenFeint vision and we can now fulfill the second half: OpenFeint X and Virtual Goods based Social Games." Citron also promised to "continue to invest in OpenFeint" for the benefit of the games using the platform now and in the process of adding it.

ngmoco's Simon Jeffery released a statement indicating that Plus+ is also already moving in a similar direction. "ngmoco has anticipated this move from Apple for some time, and is happy to see a cleaner developer and consumer experience on the horizon," he said. "As we demonstrated at GDC 2010, Plus+ took a strategic shift in direction a few months ago toward being a service, and less about being a set of social gaming features." Plus+ is now focusing on "empowering monetisation and discoverability mechanisms for the development community," as evident in the service's support for player-created virtual item stores in We Rule.

If both OpenFeint and ngmoco are to become virtual goods platforms, they stand to benefit from Game Center -- in essence, they can allow Apple to handle all the matchmaking and friend list stuff, while they focus on building marketplaces to interact with Game Center. At least until iPhone OS 5 introduces a virtual goods marketplace.